Page 237 - RUICHSS 2023 Proceeding

University of Ruhuna ISSN: 2706-0063
Matara, Sri Lanka

to support the conclusions. This broad use of IHME and World Bank data

highlights its validity and importance for our investigation.
The data was collected for the 08 SAARC countries, namely, Afghanistan,

Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The

independent variable considered in this study is ‘Urbanisation’ which is
estimated from the urban population as a percentage of the total population.

According to national statistical authorities, the term "urban population" refers
to those who reside in urban regions. Urban ratios from the United Nations

World Urbanisation Prospects and population projections from the World

Bank are used to generate the indicator. The percentage of people who live in
an area that is considered to be "urban" out of every 100 people. The dependent

variable of this study is mental disorders measured by the prevalence of mental
disorders which is estimated as the number of people with mental disorders as

a percentage of the total population.

The polynomial regression is used in this study to examine the impact of

urbanisation on mental disorders as follows,
Equation 1:

2
= + + +
0

1

2

This study focuses on the SAARC countries with considerable identification
of mental disorders to get a deeper understanding of how urbanisation impacts
mental disorders. Equation 01, a polynomial regression model, was used to
investigate the impact of urbanisation on the mental disorders of 8 SAARC
countries. Accordingly, represents the value of the dependent variable in

the I country. represents the value of the independent variable of

178